I started writing a new book today. It’s a collection of suicide notes. I bet I’ll have a hard time getting it published as it’s essentially a collection of flash/short fiction and that stuff doesn’t really sell, but I can probably get a small press company to publish it. If all else fails, samizdat publishing is easier than ever in this modern age.

Basically, I have a knack for creating characters who seem real and I want to show that off. Some of the notes are one-liners and others are pages long, but each one is written by a fully developed character. The trick to writing is creating a good character. As soon as you have a good character, you barely have to think about it because you know the character so well that you know exactly how they’d react and what they’d say in different circumstances. Obviously since suicide notes are meant to be read by people who know the person who wrote them, I can’t really go into much history because that wouldn’t be believable (one so far goes into some detail of personal history but this character posted her note on the internet for everyone to read). Because of this, I have to find creative ways to drop hints about the person’s history and personality.

I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going. Maybe I’ll post some excerpts for comments.

And in keeping with the theme of suicide, here are some random suicide facts: the suicide rate spikes during the holiday season (Thanksgiving-Christmas); left-handed people are more likely to commit suicide; more people commit suicide on Friday than on any other day of the week; if someone close to you commits suicide, you are 40% more likely to commit suicide; men often choose more violent means of suicide than women; over 1 million people commit suicide per year, and there are an estimated 10-20 million non-fatal suicide attempts per year; it’s the leading cause of death for people over 35 and the 10th leading cause of death worldwide.

So CNN just did a story about self-mutilating women in Afghanistan. The first person they talked about was a 16-year-old girl who was married to an abusive douche bag who would beat the fuck out of her daily. The cops apparently wouldn’t do shit, so to escape it she set herself on fire. Only then did the cops arrest said douche. Furthermore, the report states, this shit happens all the time over there. Just this week 5 women have been admitted to this hospital for the exact same reason. To illustrate that point, they then told a story of an 11-year-old girl whose mother was marrying her off to a 35-year-old man in exchange for money. To avoid this marriage, the girl set herself on fire. She claims that she is glad she did it, because she couldn’t bear to be married to an older man.

Later, they talk about arranged marriages in the opium trade. As police and American officials crack down on the opium trade in their never-ending attempt to deny people a good time or a lucrative business, many former opium farmers are having to sell their daughters to the drug lords in order to repay their debts. They had some clever name for these marriages, but I forget what it was. They talked to one former poppy farmer who had to marry off his 5 daughters and was still $12,000 in debt.

In the end, the had some dude explain to the viewers that “the lives of women have drastically improved” over the past 8 years (since the American invasion). He cites women getting jobs, going to school, etc. (Because, you know, Americans are a liberated species and therefore qualified to liberate others.) Obviously progress in Afghanistan is even slower than progress in the West, which means that in about 3,000 years they’ll have advanced to the point of implied sexism as opposed to overt woman-beating. Whoopee.

So I just found out that J.D. Salinger just died at the ripe old age of 91. He’ll be sorely missed, even though he published his last work in 1965. Catcher in the Rye was one of my favorite books when I was in high school. (How stereotypical is that? The countercultural loner who likes Catcher in the Rye.) Anyway, sad to hear he’s gone.

I’m too lazy to check my previous posts to see if I said anything about my existential depression. I’m also too lazy to go into deep detail about it. Suffice it to say that existential depression is a bitch of a disorder arising from the realization of a few of the basic truths of reality. It is basically depression brought on by realizing certain existential truths. It happens disproportionately among “gifted” individuals and the middle-aged (the most common type of existential depression is the midlife crisis). I have suffered from it since I was 10. The real clincher is that the only surefire cure for existential depression is to drastically change the very nature of existence. And since it seems that god isn’t down with that rap, it looks like us thinky types will be cursed with this affliction until the very day we as a race either commit suicide or find a way to become gods. Interestingly enough, studies have shown that individuals suffering from existential depression are more prone to joining cults or becoming hyperinvolved in politics (most probably as a way to either find meaning in their lives or to try to change the world).

On the one hand, I am proud of my existential depression because it played a big part in the development as a person. I highly doubt that I’d be a radical anarchist/feminist/syndicalist/potential national security threat if I wasn’t so in tune with the way things work. Also it gives me a big head because it means I’m more with it than the general population and I can actually see how things work and don’t delude myself with ridiculous fairy tales about the status quo. However, I frequently envy the deluded and wish I was one of them.

Anyway, the whole reason I haven’t posted anything in a week is that I’ve been reeling with a particularly nasty bout of depression. I’ve been getting lots of texts from friends wondering why I’ve dropped off the face of the earth, so I decided to be a little more proactive today and get out of the house and do some shit. Probably spend some money since I have an extra $100 that isn’t earmarked for anything. First I’m going to watch Amazon Women on the Moon to get me in a better mood.

So my friend recently read the Unibomber’s manifesto and we had a nice little chat about it. I first read this manifesto about a year ago and I was surprised by how much I agree with this right-wing “quack.” In fact, I initially thought of partially plagiarizing it and replacing all the hatred for the left with hatred for the right. I’m not a Barack Obama leftist, I’m a radical anarcho-syndicalist, which is as far left as you can go. The Unibomber defines the left essentially as political correctness, though. By his definition I’m a leftist for my radical feminist and queer views (in case you’re wondering how radical my feminist views are, let’s just say that I Blame the Patriarchy is my Bible). I feel that his hatred for the left is a little misplaced, and he was probably just brainwashed by the radical right. A lot of his views seem to be traditionally (radical) leftist ideas.

In any case, if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Among my favorite arguments is that about 95% of the general population are sheep who will blindly follow the status quo. Therefore, any true revolution would only concern the elite 5%, and whoever comes out on top of that group will see most of the population fall in line.

I recently read on I Blame the Patriarchy about a Super Bowl commercial that noted right-wing fanatic group Focus on the Family is making with some football star whose name I gather is Tim Tebow (I think?) and his mom. The gist of the commercial is that this dude’s mommy dearest was told when she was pregnant with him that she should abort the fetus because of immediate danger to her health. She ignored her doctor’s advice and carried the parasite to term and actually survived the ordeal. Focus on the Family is using this story, which is not representative of seriously complicated pregnancies, to argue that evil doctors are tricking innocent women into killing babies. Ridiculous! I certainly hope no women listen to this trash. I know they will, though, and I only hope no one dies because of this ignorant filth.

In other news, I learned from a friend that this Tebow guy is a hardcore Christian and paints Bible verses on his face during football games. I love it when people think that they’re some sort of “chosen one” and that their talents are gifts from god. Even more hilarious is when sports stars or celebrities thank god for their winning some match/award. As if god actually has nothing better to do than pick its favorite celebs. God is not rooting for your team from heaven so shut up. God’s too busy causing an impoverished third-world country even more harm to take your call.

So I went to work today to find a regular bitching at my boss about the government. This regular is an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam. My friend and I had been working at him for a long time, because we saw in him the makings of a great anarchist. Shortly after I gfot there he began talking about the $2 trillion that the fed lost this past year (it was supposedly for the “stimulus package”). Seeing as how most anarchists these days start with a suspicion of the Fed, I told him, “This is why we should shut down the Fed” I was delighted to hear his reply: “Fuck shutting them down. Start it on fire and shoot them as they run out.” I was like, “Do you really feel that way?” He replied, “I want to see some pink spray coming from their foreheads.” I couldn’t be more pleased.

He’s already big on minorities’ rights. He used to teach school at an Indian reservation and is disgusted at how we treat the true owners of this land.

This guy is a baby-boomer, which is what makes him such a big win for us. Too often, anarchists are depicted as restless youth who don’t really know what they want. If we can win this guy over, we can win the average worker. Don’t stop at shutting down the fed; shut down the entire system. One day we will have our revolution. I only hope that day comes in my lifetime,

So I’ve been off drugs since January 4th of this year. It was pretty easy for me to quit, honestly. However, I just started drinking again. So far tonight I have had a 6-pack of Bacardi Silver and half a 750 of Sailor Jerry’s. I have literally drunk till I puked. The problem with quitting drinking is the fact that it’s cheap and I don’t have to make a thousand calls to acquire alcohol. I’m hoping I’m able to quit this shit, because I really don’t want it to start eating up all of my money again. For a while I was on Naltrexone, but that made me even more depressed and suicidal than ever, which sucked because it actually worked to kill the booze cravings. Hopefully this is just a minor setback. I just need t find other, more productive, ways to occupy my time. I was doing a good job not drinking until I sold some art, then I thought, “Wow, now I have some cash to spend on booze.” Hopefully I’m able to cut this out. I know it’s just a minor setback and I’m sure that if I really put my mind to it I can stop. This is just a minor setback and I won’t let it get me down.

On the 15th Alan Ellis of Oink was declared not guilty. Oink was quite simply the best music-oriented bittorrent website. I was a member for a long time before the feds shut it down. It was the only place you could find the rare shit like Deep Six or East West Blast Test. I hope it gets started back up, there are still a lot of torrents I’m looking for that you can’t find anywhere else.